Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 2: The Years of Extermination

by Saul Friedlander

  “On the basis of the order [of October 18, 1940], assets held by Israelites, which have not been frozen, may be governed by special measures and thus must lead us to exercise caution in our relations with them. We do not believe that withdrawals of French securities or capital as such will be affected by paragraph 4 of the order, but it should be ensured that accounts do not show debit balances if we have not received a regular security before 23 May 1940. However, other operations, such as discounts, advances, security sales, appointments of representatives, etc., should be examined very carefully before being implemented.”

  In February 1941 Crédit Lyonnais tightened the vise: “As far as cash is concerned, Israelite assets are in principle not restricted. However, large sums should not be withdrawn…. Other operations…must in principle be refused if they involve significant amounts and may therefore constitute flight of fortune unless, of course, they are authorized by the German authorities.”162

  Aryanization proceeded apace, but not without some strange twists. Thus, one of the largest French perfume enterprises belonged to François Coty. In the 1920s Coty financed a fascist movement, Solidarité Française, and its periodical, L’Ami du Peuple, which preached militant anti-Semitism. In 1929 Coty divorced, but when he died, in 1934, his estate still owed a substantial sum to his ex-wife; it was paid in “Coty” shares. The former Mrs. Coty thus became the main shareholder and owner of the company. She married again, this time a converted Romanian Jew, León Cotnareanu. For the Aryanization bureaucracy Parfums Coty was under Jewish influence, the more so because two Jews sat on the board of directors. Complicated transactions and transfers of ownership started, involving subsidiaries in several European countries and the United States, in order to eliminate any trace of Jewish participation. In August 1941 the Germans agreed that Parfums Coty had undergone the necessary purification and in October it officially became an Aryan enterprise again.163 François Coty could rest in peace.

  In April 1941 the Jews were forbidden to fill any position—from selling lottery tickets to any form of teaching—that would put them in contact with the public. Only a few “particularly deserving intellectuals” were exempted from this total professional segregation. As for the vast majority of the French population, it did not react. Anti-Jewish propaganda intensified, as did the number of acts of anti-Jewish violence. Individual expressions of sympathy were not rare, but they were volunteered in private, far from any public notice.

  Protecting the French population by eliminating any professional contact with Jews belonged to Vichy. Protecting members of the Wehrmacht in the occupied zone from Jewish presence in the bars they patronized turned into a problem on New Year’s Eve 1940. At the Boeuf sur le Toit and at Carrère, Jews were present as German warriors toasted the coming year. Worse, at the Trois Valses, a favorite Wehrmacht hangout, a German song taken up by the band was booed by the French revelers, among whom there were Jews. The informers’ reports about these mishaps suggested that all bars patronized by the Wehrmacht should put up signs excluding Jews.164 Whether the recommendation was followed at the time is not known.

  At the beginning of 1941 the Germans decided that further coordination of the anti-Jewish measures throughout both French zones was necessary. In a January 30 meeting at military headquarters in Paris under the chairmanship of Werner Best, Kurt Lischka, Knochen’s representative and Theodor Dannecker informed the participants that a central office for Jewish affairs had to be set up in France to implement the measures decided on to solve the Jewish problem in Europe. The functions of the office would be to deal with all police matters regarding the arrest, surveillance, and registration of Jews; to exercise economic control (exclusion of Jews from economic life and participation in the “restitution” of Jewish businesses into Aryan hands); to organize propaganda activities (dissemination of anti-Jewish propaganda among the French population), and to set up an anti-Jewish research institute. In the meantime the Paris Préfecture de Police was ready to assume these functions. The establishment of the new office should be left to the French authorities to avoid opposition to a German initiative; the Germans should limit themselves to “suggestions.” Everyone agreed.165

  The Germans were confident that even if the new office turned out to be less forceful than they wished (mainly in its dealings with native Jews), they would be able in due time to ensnare it in the full scope of their own policies. In reporting to Berlin on March 6, 1941, about a conversation with Darlan regarding the new office and Pétain’s wish to protect native Jews, Abetz indicated how any French reservations would be overcome: “It would be advisable,” the ambassador wrote, “to have the French Government establish this office…. It would thus have a valid legal foundation and its activity could then be stimulated through German influence in the occupied territory to such an extent that the unoccupied territory would be forced to join in the measures taken.”166

  On March 29, 1941, the Vichy government established the Central Office for Jewish Affairs (Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives, or CGQJ); its first chief was Xavier Vallat.167 Vallat belonged to the nationalist anti-Jewish tradition of the Action Française, and did not share the racial anti-Semitism of the Nazis. Nonetheless the CGQJ soon became the hub of rapidly expanding anti-Jewish activity.168 Its main immediate “achievement” was the reworking of the Jewish statute of October 3, 1940. The new Statut des Juifs was accepted by the government and became law on June 2, 1941.169 Strangely enough, for the staunchly Catholic Vallat, baptism seemed inconsequential and, implicitly, inherited cultural-racial elements were at the core of his conception of the Jew.

  The new statute aimed at filling the many gaps discovered in the October 1940 edict. In the case of French “mixed breeds,” for example, with two Jewish grandparents who had converted to another religion, the cut-off date validating the conversion in terms of the decree was June 25, 1940, the official date of the armistice between Germany and France. Moreover, conversion was considered valid only if the convert had chosen to join a denomination recognized before the separation of church and state of December 1905. Only the CGQJ would be entitled to issue certificates of nonmembership of the Jewish race.170

  Like the statute of October 1940, that of June 1941 did not establish any distinction between native and foreign Jews. When Vallat called on Abetz on April 3, the ambassador did in fact suggest that in the forthcoming legislation those long-established Jews “who would have acted contrary to the social and natural interests of the French nation” should also be declared “foreign.” Such a law, which would have meant the cancellation of citizenship of segments of French Jewry or the denaturalization of recently naturalized French Jews, was not included in the batch of new decrees. On the other hand, loopholes favoring French Jews, about which Abetz was concerned, did not appear either.171

  While the French authorities were issuing their new decrees, Dannecker decided, in early 1941, to use a small group of rabid French anti-Semites, La Communauté Française, to establish an “Institute for the Study of the Jewish Questions” (Institut d’Étude des Questions Juives), under the direction of a capitaine Paul Sézille. The so-called institute, whose main aim was to spread Nazi-type anti-Semitic propaganda under the cover of a French identity, was not affiliated with Vallat’s CGQJ and remained throughout an instrument of Dannecker’s agency and of the German embassy in Paris.172

  Either as a result of the institute’s activities or upon an initiative of the German embassy, in the spring of 1941 anti-Jewish posters decorated the streets of Paris: One portrayed the Unknown Soldier surging from his tomb to slit the throats of Jewry and Freemasonry: another displayed a crooked hand stretched out to snatch the scepter and the crown, a direct reference to Jud Süss, then playing at two of the largest movie theaters in the city.173

  It seems that French film critics tended to emphasize the artistic quality of Harlan’s production and to downplay its ideological significance.174 Of course, in the collaborationist press, the film’s message go
t its share of enthusiastic comments: “This is a film full of true statements that it would be infinitely useful to disseminate after all the lies that were fed to us over the years,” Rebatet (under the pseudonym Vinneuil) wrote in Le Petit Parisien on March 2. “Everyone can draw lessons from its message for the study of a question the solution of which had become not only France’s concern, but that of all of Europe.”175

  Left-wing Catholics, particularly those linked to Mounier’s Esprit, reacted differently. We have seen Mounier’s previous hesitations. By mid-1941 his position had become clear; his own review of the film, in the July issue of Esprit, concluded as follows: “The prewar French production has accustomed us to less heaviness, to a sounder judgment, less unhealthy…more specifically French.176 In French provincial towns the film even provoked some protests and incidents.177

  On May 14, 1941, on Dannecker’s orders, French police arrested 3,733 Jewish immigrants. The raid was probably meant to bring more pressure on the Coordination Committee to establish an Executive Council in which French and foreign Jews would be equally represented, a move the native French Jews stubbornly opposed.178 The next day the collaborationist paper Paris Midi hailed the disappearance of “five thousand parasites from greater Paris.” No other paper (apart from the Jewish press) deemed the event worth mentioning.179

  Jean Guéhenno, a voice from the Left, reacted in his diary: “Yesterday,” he noted, “in the name of the French law, five thousand Jews have been taken to concentration camps. Poor Jews that came from Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, penniless people living from lowly trades that must have greatly threatened the State. This is called ‘cleansing.’ In rue Compans, several men were taken away. Their wives, their children begged the policemen, shouted, wept…. The ordinary Parisians [le petit peuple parisien] who were witnessing these heart-rending scenes were filled with disgust and shame.”180 Yet despite the reactions mentioned by Guéhenno, no protest was openly voiced, and the commissariat received only a single outraged letter.181

  Perhaps the petit peuple parisien expressed the compassion described by Guéhenno. Biélinky, standing in a food line, received much the same impression, according to a diary entry of June 17: “You know, Célestine,” one housewife was telling another, “the little Pole who is my son’s friend, they were together at school, so he is very sad to-day—Why is that?—Because his brother was arrested and apparently sent to a concentration camp. Though they are all so nice and honest. But what did he do, the poor one?…—Nothing at all, it’s because he is a Jew…—Poor people [les pauvres], says the other one, melancholically, and the line moves slowly toward the potatoes stall.”182

  It has occasionally been argued that Vichy’s anti-Jewish measures and its ready cooperation with the Germans were a “rational” maneuver within the general framework of collaboration in order to maintain as much control as possible over developments in the occupied zone and to obtain a favorable bargaining position for the future status of France in Hitler’s new Europe. In other words, Vichy supposedly displayed a nonideological acceptance of Nazi goals (a “collaboration d’État” as opposed to some wild “collaborationism”) in the hope of harvesting some tangible benefits in return.183

  Political calculation was undoubtedly part of the overall picture, but Vichy’s policy was also determined by the right-wing anti-Semitic tradition that was part and parcel of the “Révolution nationale.” Moreover, collaboration d’État does not account for the fact that, as we saw, the French episcopate welcomed the exclusion of Jews from public life as early as August 1940, and that mainly among the rural population and the provincial Catholic middle classes, anti-Semitism was not limited to a tiny minority but widespread. Thus, although the Vichy legislation was not dictated by the passions of French “collaborationists,” it was nonetheless a calculated response both to a public mood and to ideological-institutional interests, such as those of the church.

  In general anti-Semitism may well have been outweighed by sheer indifference, but not to the point of forgoing tangible advantages. As Helmut Knochen put it in January 1941, “It is almost impossible to cultivate among the French an anti-Jewish sentiment that rests on an ideological foundation, while the offer of economic advantages much more easily excites sympathy for the anti-Jewish struggle.”184

  There was a striking (yet possibly unperceived at the time) relation between French attitudes toward the Jews and the behavior of representatives of native Jewry toward the foreign or recently naturalized Jews living in the country. While native Jews affiliated to the community were represented by the Consistoire and its local branches, foreign Jews—and the recently naturalized ones—were loosely affiliated to an umbrella organization, the Fédération des Sociétés Juives de France, comprising various political associations and their related network of welfare organizations. Part of the umbrella organization came to be known as “Rue Amelot” (the Paris address of the main office of its leading committee).

  After the Rothschilds had fled the country. Jacques Helbronner, the acting vice-president of the Consistoire, became the de facto leader of native French Jewry (Rue Amelot was more collectively run by the heads of its various associations). In many ways Helbronner was a typical representative of the old-stock French Jewish elite: a brilliant officer during World War I, a sharp legal mind who at a young age was appointed to the Conseil d’État (the highest civil service institution in France), Helbronner married into old (and substantial) French Jewish money. He belonged, quintessentially, to the French Jewish haute bourgeoisie, a group considered almost French by its non-Jewish surroundings. And despite his own genuine interest in Jewish matters—which led him to become active in the Consistoire—Helbronner, like all his peers, saw himself first and foremost as French. Typically enough he was close to Philippe Pétain, since the day during World War I when, as head of the personal staff (chef de cabinet) of the minister of war, he was sent to inform Pétain of his appointment as généralissime (commander in chief of all French forces). Another friend of Helbronner’s was Jules-Marie Cardinal Gerlier, cardinal-archbishop of Lyon and head of the French episcopate. In March 1941 Helbronner was appointed president of the Consistoire.185

  Few native French Jews achieved the exalted status of a Helbronner, but the great majority felt as deeply integrated in French society as he did and were to share the positions he adopted: France was their only conceivable national and cultural home, notwithstanding the injustice of the new laws. The growing anti-Semitism of the thirties and its most violent outbursts following the defeat were, in their opinion, caused in large part by the influx of foreign Jews; the situation thus created could be mitigated by a strict distinction between native French “separation” Jews and the foreign Jews living in the country. The Vichy authorities had to be convinced of this basic tenet.

  It was precisely this difference that Helbronner attempted to convey to Pétain in a memorandum he sent him in November 1940, after the first statute and its corollaries had sunk in. In this statement, titled Note sur la question juive, the future president of the Consistoire argued that the Jews were not a race and did not descend from the Jews who had lived in Palestine two thousand years before. Rather, they were a community composed of many races and, as far as France was concerned, a community entirely integrated in its homeland. The problems began with the arrival of foreign Jews “who started to invade our soil.” The open-door policies of the postwar governments had been a mistake, and they resulted “in a normal anti-Semitism the victims of which were now the old French Israelite families.” Helbronner then suggested a series of measures that would free the native Jews from the limitations of the statute but not the foreign or recently naturalized Jews…186 Helbronner’s message went unanswered.

  Over the following months the head of the Consistoire and a number of his colleagues pursued their futile and demeaning entreaties. The messages and visits to Vichy pointedly continued to ignore the fate of the foreign Jews and to plead for the French Israelites only. The epi
tome of this course of action was probably the solemn petition sent to the maréchal by the entire leadership of the Consistoire, including the chief rabbi of France. The closing paragraph was unambiguous in its omission of any reference to the non-French Jews:

  “Jewish Frenchmen still wish to believe that the persecutions of which they are the object are entirely imposed on the French State by the occupying authorities and that the representatives of France have tried their best to attenuate their rigors…Jewish Frenchmen, if they cannot safeguard the future and perhaps even the life of their children and grandchildren, but seeking above all to leave them honorable names, demand of the head of state who, as a great soldier and a fervent Christian, incarnates in their eyes the fatherland in all its purity, that he should recognize this solemn protest, which is their only weapon in their weakness. Jewish Frenchmen, more than ever attached to their faith, keep intact their hope and their confidence in France and its destiny.”187 The second Jewish statute was to be Vichy’s answer to the petitions.

  Time and again some of the most prestigious names of French Jewry confirmed that, in their view, the fate of the foreign Jews was none of their concern. Thus, when, during the spring of 1941, Dannecker started using pressure for the establishment of a unified Jewish Council, René Mayer, also a prominent member of the Consistoire (he would become a postwar French prime minister), asked Vallat to encourage the foreign Jews to emigrate.188 So did Marc Bloch, one of the most eminent historians of his time.